Good Evening

What a week!

As you can imagine the cartoonist have been busy…so with sooooo many cartoons this week, I have to break them up into two posts. This first one will focus on the decisions rendered from the Supreme Court, primarily dealing with the Voting Rights Act and DOMA. They are in no particular order, and some are better than others, but I think y’all are going to get a kick out of them.

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9 Comments on “Friday Nite Lite: SCOTUS Edition”

Hey y’all, second post will be late tonight or early tomorrow morning, depends on how tonight goes. I gotta cook and stuff. ;) Don’t feel like it so it may drain any of the energy I did have left to do that other cartoon post.

9th circuit lifted stay on marriages in CA this afternoon. Marriages have resumed. Kris Perry and Sandy Stier were married at SF City Hall moments ago. What a Pride it is going to be! And yes, those lights are beautiful at night, Bill Graham auditorium to the east is rainbow lit too. We basked in their radiance after the decision day celebration in the Castro. Can’t believe it was only 2 days ago. Waited all my adult life for real change and now its flowing in abundance!

The Obama administration issued its final compromise Friday for religiously affiliated charities, hospitals and other nonprofits that object to covering birth control in their employee health plans.

The Health and Human Services Department said the final plan simplifies how insurers provide the coverage separately from faith-based groups and gives religious nonprofits more time to comply. However, the changes are unlikely to resolve objections from faith groups that the requirement violates their religious freedom.

[…]

The Obama administration offered a series of accommodations, leading to the final rules released Friday.

Under the compromise, administration officials said they simplified the definition of religious organizations that are fully exempt from the requirement. The change means a church that also ran a soup kitchen would not have to comply.

Other religious nonprofits must notify their insurance company that they object to birth control coverage. The insurer or administrator of the plan will then notify affected employees separately that coverage will be provided at no cost. The insurers would be reimbursed by a credit against fees owed the government.

Michael Hash, director of the health reform office of the Health and Human Services Department, said the final regulation spells out in more detail the buffer between religious charities and contraceptive coverage. Faith-based groups were given another reprieve – until Jan. 1 – to comply.

“There’s a much brighter line here – a simpler line – and we think that responds to a good many of the comments that we got,” said Michael Hash, director of the Health and Human Services office of health reform. More than 400,000 comments were submitted over the last several months, the agency said.

Judy Waxman of the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group based in Washington, said she would prefer women hear directly about the coverage from their insurer, but her organization could accept the plan. “It’s fair,” she said.

However, Eric Rassbach, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm challenging the contraception coverage rule, said “it doesn’t really change the overall way they’re trying to do this.” The Becket Fund represents many of organizations challenging the regulation in federal court.

This makes me so mad! This lets these crazies force their religious beliefs on to others — and get off scot free. That logic should get me out of paying taxes for the Iraq war since unjust and illegal war is against my religious beliefs.

After Davis, the daughter of a single mother, led a filibuster effort to derail a tough abortion bill in the legislature earlier this week, Perry said it was “unfortunate” that she didn’t learn a lesson from her own example.

Perry subsequently claimed that he was actually offering praise of the Democrat, but Republican state House Speaker Joe Straus evidently doesn’t have the governor’s back on the matter. Straus said Friday that Perry’s remarks undermine the GOP’s effort to pass what would be one of the most restrictive abortion measures in the country.

“Disagreements over policy are important and they’re healthy, but when he crosses the line into the personal, then he damages himself and he damages the Republican Party,” Straus told The Texas Tribune.

If it were up to Joe Strauss, the abortion bill would never have been brought up at all.

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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.

You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.